An economist, Prof. Uche Uwaleke, has urged the Federal Government to vigorously pursue regulatory reforms and improve access to credit information.
Uwaleke said in an interview with reporters in Abuja that the pursuance would improve the economic status of the country.
According to him, a faithful implementation of the cashless policy would further move the country up on the rung of one the best countries to do business.
He said this following the annual World Bank Group Doing Business report analysis regulations which applied to an economy’s business during their life cycle.
The Tide gathered that the analysis which includes the countries’ economic operations, trading across borders and tax payments, ranked Nigeria as one of the 20th worst country to do business
He said,“ This year’s ranking, which placed Nigeria 170th among 189 countries surveyed, shows an improvement of 2.9 per cent on the 175 position it occupied last year.
“But to further move up on the rungs, the country needs to vigorously pursue regulatory reforms and tax holidays especially for SMEs as well as improved access to credit information.
“Another area of focus, in my view, should be the faithful implementation of the cashless policy.’’
Uwaleke also urged government to plug leakages and channel its scarce resources to productive areas by allocating more money to capital expenditure.
He, however, applauded government’s plan to create a 25 billion dollar fund with public and private financing to modernise infrastructure and avoid a recession.
On the issue of further devaluation of the country’s currency, Uwaleke said expressed opposition to it, insisting that it had negative affect on people and the economy.
“Given our import dependent nature, it will lead to cost push inflation, increase in unemployment and poverty.
“The country’s non-oil exports are not likely to increase because of the raw nature of our exports and this has been the experience with past devaluations of the Naira.
“In the same way, imports may not decrease, although their prices in Naira would shoot up because of the inelastic nature of the demand for most imports.
“ Consequently, the pass-through effect of exchange rate devaluation will be reflected in a higher rate of inflation in the country,’’ he said.
Uwaleke said several factors needed to be clarified before the proposal could be made effective.
He listed some of them as the total cost implication of the measure, finance, accurate statistics, the modalities for disbursement and definition of an unemployed Nigerian.